


Incoming Transmission

by tardisy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-9x11, Post-Episode: s09e11 First Born
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:44:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tardisy/pseuds/tardisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wonders when it became so ingrained that it is now second-nature, when his inner monologue defaulted to a broadcast for his loyal audience of one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incoming Transmission

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted at [Tumblr](http://tardisy.tumblr.com/post/74700280097/incoming-transmission-post-9x11)!

He catches himself doing it often. It’s usually in those moments in-between, when his thoughts are running on automatic and he’s only existing; usually, it’s all he can bear to do, these days. Waiting at a stoplight, or in line at the gas station, the warmth leeching from the coffee cup in his hand doing little to ward off the bone-deep chill he can’t seem to shake. Staring out of a diner window, clutching a sticky menu, the smell of grease turning his stomach. As he cleans and oils his guns in a musty motel room, or as he uses those same weapons to mindlessly rage against something toothy and mean. Just before he drifts off into an uneasy sleep, and when he jolts awake, sweaty, heart thundering wildly against his ribcage.

He wonders what he thinks, how it works, how he never really asked and probably won’t have a chance to now. What is it like for him, he wonders, receiving these strange, staccato messages from across the space between them? Does he get upset? Does he smile? Does he get annoyed? Does he turn it off so he doesn’t have to hear? Because he _doesn’t_ want to hear? Does he care? ( _He shouldn’t._ )

Sometimes he doesn’t even know what he says, has become used to the embarrassment that flushes through him with the awareness that he has only said something, always cutting off with a _Shit, sorry_.

He wonders when it became so ingrained that it is now second-nature, when his inner monologue defaulted to a broadcast for his loyal audience of one. Why, when he loses himself in these moments, do his hands settle by reflex in his lap – under a table, under the wheel, under the pillow – and clutch together, fingernails biting dully into his skin? And why does it all bother him far less than he thinks he should, for no reason anyone would likely guess.

Perhaps it’s because, on those long and too lonely stretches of highway, when the oppressive emptiness of the passenger seat makes his chest constrict too tightly, when the volume knob can’t turn any higher and it’s still not enough to drown out the overwhelming noise inside his head, he’ll punch at the dash until the car plunges into an unbearable silence. He’ll roll down his window and he’ll drive, even when the sporadic lights ahead bleed with the landscape from the wetness in this eyes. And he’ll think. He’ll focus, fight through the whipping tempest of desperate, dangerous thoughts. He’ll push above it all, and think upwards, outwards, will them toward the one he knows is listening, is always listening, even when he tries to convince himself otherwise.

It would be easier to call, of course, but even thinking of hearing his voice makes his stomach twist and hands shake. The things he says out-loud in his head are not things he believes his mouth could properly form, even if he wanted to, and he doesn’t. Their place is floating in this fragile void, that leaves him feeling both flayed open but calmer, uncertain but safer.    

It would be so simple to call, to allow himself the comfort of a response or acknowledgment, of his steadfast devotion and his kindness, but he doesn’t deserve such a thing, hasn’t ever, if he’s honest, but especially not now. Not anymore. He barely deserves the consoling rumble of his beloved engine, the only sound in the murky stillness.

So he’ll always begin his conscious broadcasts with his sign-on: “ _Cas, got your ears on?_ ” and tell him that everything he says stays here, between us, always, and _don’t try to call ‘cause my phone’s dead_ (a lie, and he knows he knows, but he respects it anyway, always has).

Then he’ll grip the wheel and take a deep breath as he flies through the night.

And he’ll pray.  

 

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

 

He catches him doing it often. Waiting in line at a gas station – and like the Biggerson’s, they all seem to be the same – coffee in hand, the only thing he can bear to ingest anymore. Sitting at a stopped train, in the middle of trying to figure out why the car bounces and raises on its frame at seemingly random times. Reading an ancient tome in the Men of Letters library. As he’s wearily wiping another sibling’s blood off of his blade, or standing alone under the stars at another dead-end.

He has always heard him, of course, since he first learned, in a blaze of white light, what name to whisper. It has always twisted something inside of him, something he attributed to being cracked, or wrong, or broken. Now, he understands, it was and is all of these things, but in a way different from his previous understanding. It is his own _restraint_ that is cracked, the urge to go to him so strong. It is _wrong_ that he is alone, and that more and more he only speaks of his worthiness of pain, isolation, and damnation, instead of what he truly deserves. It is his own _heart_ that is broken, every time he hears his voice, sometimes sober but more frequently slurred and disjointed, and more often full of sorrow, and anger, frustration, and weariness.

It would be so easy to call him, but he knows the only voice he will hear will be a recording. It tears at him, to think of him out there, alone, talking to him when he cannot respond, and hopes when they meet again and he can it will not be too late.

But no matter what, wherever he is, he tilts his head to the sky and stops, if he can. If he can’t, he still hears. He will not turn it off; not when it comes to Dean. He _always_ listens.

And he cares. He cares, he cares, _he cares_.

He _loves_.

And although, for now, it may fall on deaf ears: he answers.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted at [Tumblr](http://tardisy.tumblr.com/post/74700280097/incoming-transmission-post-9x11)!


End file.
